The Amazing Sex Life Of Rabbits ★★

Warning: If you’re going to namedrop Edward Albee early in a play about two couples — including one with a college professor — spending a discordant evening together where humping is inevitably on the menu, you better deliver, because Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? remains a much-loved classic for a reason. Unfortunately, playwright and director Michael Shaw Fisher does not. His The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits is all, to quote George from Albee’s magnum opus, “dashed hopes and good intentions.”

The premise has great promise: a divorced couple meets for dinner with their new spouses, and mayhem ensues. Because Fisher seems more interested in burgeoning class conflict than in addictive love, the machinations play out more like Indecent Proposal than Private Lives — a pity, since Rabbits aches for the kind of laughs Coward might have supplied.

A paucity of giggles is not the production’s only problem. The plot machinations can be seen long before they’re revealed, the confusing set — even by fringe standards — makes little sense, and too often the performers don’t seem to be acting in the same style, which ranges from overly broad to undecided. Even at just 75 minutes, it’s obvious some serious editing would do the play a favor, especially at the show’s start and conclusion.

All is not lost, however. As promised by the title, a very funny sex montage eventually arrives, and Rebecca Larsen, as Danielle, emerges as a believable character whose desires drive her every decision. Most importantly, Fisher toys with some great possibilities in Rabbits, clearly seeing the inherent, growing drama between America’s haves and have-nots. In this script, though, there’s too much cotton and not enough tail.